Younger Us, Deux.

My fingers are still all kinda cold-and-numby at the tips on the keys as I type and the Shad bumps in the speakers.

Here’s me rolling dark, deserted country roads in full effect with the dyno-hub light on the Troll. Dog above, what an amazing thing.

I rolled in the -9ºC, crisp darkness with stars in full burn, in my winter boots, jeans, lined work gloves, orange parka and home-made knit hat and found an unexpected flush of glee that had me thinking to myself what a weirdo I am.

After a stop at the ‘corner store’ for some Twizzlers to bring back for dessert, 12-year old me was definitely feeling it though and took the long way home. My fingers are feeling it a bit too.

January Check

The Missus finished a batch of masks for a coworker so at lunch today I decided to hop on the Cross Check to deliver them to the office. I looked out the window and saw the sun, but it was deceptive – it was really cold out with the wind. Got to the office and was happy get my hands under some hot water in the sink to warm them up a bit. Whew but it stung though. Remember to check the wind chill, kids.

I took this photo and then on the way home was wondering if I’d ever had this bike out in January before. Dug back through the ride logs and photos and only found one other time back on January 26, 2019. I’d say it was global warming, but it was still damn cold today, even though we haven’t had much snow this year.

Was nice to spin the skinny tires on the ‘fast’ bike for the first time in a long time. Here’s the snaps from the ride in 2019.

The Cross Check remains the most versatile bike in the stable.

On ‘Patriots’

Arthur Schopenhauer throws a little shade on some recent events, with help from Michael Dirda and The Washington Post:

“Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud, adopts, as a last resource, pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and glad to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority.”

– ‘On The Suffering of the World’, Arthur Schopenhauer

I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got

I’ve been listening to these sessions on stoicism on the Waking Up app by William Irvine. One of the main points so far has been that the Stoics stipulated that to live a happy life one needed to shift from wanting things we don’t have to wanting the things we already do.

Today what we already had was a whole bunch of rain dumped on top of some existing slush and a temperature hovering around freezing. The Missus needed more hair elastics from the dollar store to make more masks, so I decided to ride the bike to go get them. It was a pretty miserable day to ride bikes, so conversely, awesome.

I would have ridden the new-to-me Troll, but the roads still had pretty good sections of ice on ’em and I think it would have been pretty dicey. I figured the snowmobile trails were probably out as well – the rain would have rendered them 6″ of mashed-potato slush. So I decided to just ride the Pugsley – with it’s studded tires – on the road, a slog for sure, but I wasn’t really in a hurry, and hey – a workout is where you find it, right?

I did something I’ve never done before and clipped the WONDERBOOM bluetooth speaker to the bars and shuffled my favorites playlist for the ride – which was interesting. I had to have it pretty much cranked to be able to hear it over the buzz of the fat, studded tires on pavement, which made for some interesting encounters with walkers, runners and other miscellany folk I encountered along the way.

I would have to think the high point would have been rolling into the parking lot of the Dollarama (freshly-sanitized) with Simple Mind’s ‘Alive and Kicking’ at full volume. Not sure the slew of good ol’ boys in jacked up pickup trucks and earflap hats smoking joints while waiting for their pajama-pant clad wives in the store had to think about silly old me riding a bicycle in the slush. They may have been somewhat conflicted because though silly, my bike does have cool big black tiars.